[profh0011]

And now, to let the other shoe drop.

A lot of fans (including the long-winded Don McGregor) thought Steranko's NICK FURY #1 was one of the coolest, best comics ever, ever written.  I wasn't one of 'em.  It LOOKED great.  but it was almost completely DISJOINTED and incoherent.  If someone argued it was a triumph of style over substance... okay.  But if so, it should have been a one-time thing. 

Instead, he did it again in #2.  And then again in #3.  Which, incidentally, was his first of 2 remake-tributes to stories in CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #10 from 1940.  I'm not making this up.  Right down to the 2-page spread title sequence.  Yep.  KIRBY did it first.

I read that one day, Frank Springer, fresh from DC's "Secret Six" (I believe it had just been cancelled without the story being fnished) visited Marvel, wherer "ye editor" asked him, "What series would you like to do?"  Naturally, coming off a spy series, he said... "NICK FURY".

When Martin Goodman sold the company in late '67, the new owners, Perfect Film, switched them from their previous distributor (who also handled DC and kept them to a small number of books per month) to another, and plans were immediately hatched to expand the line, and flood more of the newsstand shelves.  And so, for example, all 3 split books (STRANGE TALES, TALES OF SUSPENSE and TALES TO ASTONISH) were turned into 6 solo books.

Most of those "first" issues were either the middle or the end of ongoing stories.  But most of those "first" issues also had RETOLD ORIGIN stories.  Most of them sucked compared to the originals.  The one Roy Thomas did with Dan Adkins DIDN'T.  Damn, that was good.  Steranko decided NOT TO DO ONE.  Apparently, that bugged his boss.

And so, what happens?  Roy "SECRET ORIGINS" Thomas teamed with Frank "MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH" Springer (see Dell Comics, heh) to do-- NOT a real "SHIELD ORIGIN ISSUE" (as proclaimed on the cover) but an INFERIOR retelling of ST #135.  Kirby did it WAY, WAY better.

"Whatever Happened To Scorpio?" was announced for #4.  Instead, we got that non-ORIGIN thing.  Steranko told his boss, IF he interrupted his UNBROKEN run on the book, it would HURT SALES.  And so, he threatened to WALK off the book if his boss did what he was planning.  His boss figured he was bluffing.  HE WASN'T BLUFFING.

For decades since, his boss spread the false narrative that Steranko was "slow" and had "BLOWN A DEADLINE".  He hadn't.  Leave it to you-know-who to screw things up, then publicly BLAME "the talent".  In a further effort to take Steranko down a peg, after first replacing Joe Sinnott (their best inker) with Frank Giacoia (who wasn't bad) and then Dan Adkins (who was suddenly doing a lot less on DR. STRANGE), he decided to shove John Tartaglione on as the inker.    He inked 3 of Steranko's books.  The 2 X-MEN issues sucked.  NICK FURY #5 didn't.  This is because, suddenly having #4 pushed back a whole month to #5, and with no other assignments (oh yeah, this was definitely a boss saying "FUCK YOU!" to a free-lancer), Steranko TOOK BACK the pages... and RE-INKED them himself.  UNPAID, UNCREDITED.  Just like when Kirby, Ditko and so on and son on would WRITE.

It seems to me the writing on #5 was a step up than it was on #1, 2 & 3.  It got WAY BETTER on CAPTAIN AMERICA #110, 111 & 113.  (By the way, Steranko DIDN'T blow a deadline on #112, EITHER.  He NEVER blew a deadline in his life.)  What you had were 2 guys with massive egos clashing.  I suppose it was inevitable that Steranko would walk, just as Ditko & Wood had done.


So, suddenly without the one guy holding it together, NICK FURY began to disintegrate right before readers' eyes.  And unfortunately, STRANGE TALES always sold less than the other 2 split books.  So splitting it into 2 books was a mistake, since it was reaching for 2 very different audiences, and now, each book probably had HALF the sales any give ST issue had.  OY.

Once things shook out on DR. STRANGE, Thomas, Colan & Palmer (MY GOD, what an art team!) were fabulous... but it wasn't selling.  NICK FURY, meanwhile, turned to TOTAL CHAOS.

#6 had Roy Thomas on story, Frank Springer on art, Archie Goodwin on dialogue.

#7 had Goodwin & Frank Springer.

#8 had Ernie Hart, Springer (with help from Herb Trimpe) & John Tartag.  (WTF?)

NOT BRAND ECCH #11 had Arnold Drake, Frank Springer & Tom Sutton.  It still cracks me up to think I read that many years before getting ahold of the story it was making fun of.



THEN, some stability arrived... but, not quite.

#9, 10 & 11 had Gary "burnout" Friedrich & Frank Springer, with #10 oddly inked by Johnny Craig.  Of this 3-parter (each chapter done as a stand-alone story), part 1 was actually pretty damn good.  Part 2 was average at best.  Part 3... was INCOHERENT.  I later found out Friedrich has a SERIOUS drinking problem.  His output, on every series I've seen him work on, was VERY, very incosnsistent.

So then out of nowhere... #12 had the team of Steve Parkhouse as writer, BARRY SMITH as writer-artist, and Sid Greene as inker.  MAN, did this think look weird.  This was when Smith was heavy into his "JACK KIRBY!" mode, only with Steranko-inspired panel layouts.  Some of it looked cool.  Some of it looked terribly amateurish.  But what has always stood out to me... this was the BEST DAMNED issue since Steranko.  NO S*** !!!  Whoever among those 2 Brits was responsible for the story & dialogue, they managed to capture the real essense of "Nick Fury" in ways Thomas, Goodwin, Hart & Friedrich had all failed miserably to do.  And what a cliffhanger.

Disaster struck.  Smith's green card ran out, and he was deported back to England until he could get it straightened out.

Part 2 of THIS 3-parter... was done by Gary Friedrich & HERB TRIMPE.  It was completely incoherent, and seemed to have no connection with part 1.  W-- T-- F!!!???

Part 3... MAN, what an improvement.  It wasn't completely coherent, but it did-- mostly-- sort of-- tie up the loose ends.  What they did here, really, was basically DITCH the Streranko influence, and try their damndest to recapture the KIRBY run of the series.  You know... this could have worked.

But then #15 came along.  Friedrich & Trimpe were about to start a whole new EPIC.  I'm betting they got the entire issue finished, when suddenly... sales reports came in, somebody decided, "PULL THE PLUG!!!", and before it got to the printer, DICK AYERS was recruited to do several brand-new pages at the end of the book, to replace what Trimpe had done, CHANGE the ending, and bring the series to a crashing halt... where it looked like Nick had been ASSASSINATED.  What nerve.  They killed the book, and KILLED its hero.

I dunno.  I think... just, MAYBE!! ...if Friedrich & Trimpe had taken over with #6, and stuck with it, the book might have lasted.


Instead, a few months later, Roy Thomas & Sal Buscema did a sequel in which Nick acted COMPLETELY out-of-character, put the lives of a whole team of heroes at risk, and in the process, I have no doubt, TOTALLY screwed over whatever Steranko had in mind concerning the mystery of Scorpio. OHHHHHHHH...  Fury hasn't been right since.

[profh0011]

In the books his name was Lew Archer but the studio changed this to Harper to evoke Paul Newman's earlier success, Hud (1963). And his next one was Hombre. Subliminal advertising.

YEP, yep, that's right, that's what I read somewhere.  Crazy Hollllllywood.   


Hey, wait, wasn't it an "ARCHER" tv series?

[The Australian Panther]

Hey, wait, wasn't it an "ARCHER" tv series? 

Paul Newman played Harper in the movie. Since the TV series also premiered in 1975, maybe they changed it to distance the movie from the TV show.

A lot of fans (including the long-winded Don McGregor) thought Steranko's NICK FURY #1 was one of the coolest, best comics ever, ever written.

I'm one of them,. [Although not 'written' but created. It was a visual narrative creation. Given the verbiage in his own writing , not sure that McGregor would have even understood it at that point in his career.] Not enough space here to say why I loved Steranko, but to quote Seinfeld, 'Not that there's anything wrong with that.'

And so, he threatened to WALK off the book if his boss did what he was planning.  His boss figured he was bluffing.  HE WASN'T BLUFFING.

Steranko had an advantage almost no other comic creator had, he had his own business and didn't need to keep doing comics.

plans were immediately hatched to expand the line, and flood more of the news-stand shelves.  And so, for example, all 3 split books (STRANGE TALES, TALES OF SUSPENSE and TALES TO ASTONISH) were turned into 6 solo books.

I was buying every Marvel book at the time. It was always obvious to me that the biggest problem then was finding enough artists and writers to keep the quality up. And of course they couldn't.
The 'Editor's' obvious gift for disrespecting people didn't help  No t everybody was as patient as Kirby and Ditko.   
Also for mine, Roy's writing was not up to it. Oh, he improved eventually, - and I count a couple of his Avengers as masterpieces of their time -but he is still a verbal communicator and not one who can communicate well in terms of pictures on the page.
But Art and quality wise?
Until Wood came aboard, Daredevil was floundering.
And many  of the artists who did come aboard, including Wood, couldn't continue working for 'the editor' and departed.
The X-men entered a decline it never recovered from until Claremont redefined the book.
Ant-man/ Giant-man/Goliath did not get his own book.
Daredevil. Gene Colan is a good artist but better suited for something like DR Strange or Dracula. And until Miller came alone, he was lumbered with some of the lamest villains imaginable.       
Iron Man was second- rate for most of the first 100 issues. Why it never got cancelled, I don't know.
Submariner never had a clear, interesting, consistent narrative. Actually still doesn't in my opinion. John Byrne came closest, but he was cancelled too.   
I've said this before, and probably will again, but what I consider the single greatest art travesty in comics was X-men 12, the origin of the Juggernaut. This was pencilled by Kirby and then given to Alex Toth to ink - 'the Editor' - insulted everyone by getting them to first work over Jacks' pencils. Including people like John Severin - but if he wasn't named in the credits you would never know Toth had anything to do with it because - wait for it- they got Vince Coletta to ink over the top of KIrby and Toth. Even back then, I knew it was a travesty. The only piece of work that Toth did for Marvel in that era. You can understand why,
[One of the best things Kirby ever wrote and drew, Uncanny X-men #17, 'And none will survive' is virtually unknown because it was inked by Werner Roth and assumed to be one of his books.
This book is a textbook example of how to do a 32 page comic.   

Once things shook out on DR. STRANGE, Thomas, Colan & Palmer (MY GOD, what an art team!) were fabulous... but it wasn't selling. 

I think there were two Three main reasons Marvel survived through that period.
Firstly on the strength of the earlier work.
Secondly Because of the comparative dullness of DC, who were still adapting to catch up to the market Marvel was reaching.
#3 [to #10]  Jack Kirby, everywhere - but in particular, The Fantastic Four and Thor.
SHIELD? Low sales or no, many picked up SHIELD because of Steranko and were never going to keep reading the book for the character if they had to look at Herb Trimpes art. So if they already had low sales and they lost much of the audience they already had, the book was doomed. 
cheers! 
     

[profh0011]

I've had this mental short list of "worst Marvel Comics of the 60s.  Basically, 4 issues...

DAREDEVIL #2
DAREDEVIL #3
DAREDEVIL #4

I think it's pretty obvious what the problem there was...  (It's sad, because DAREDEVIL #1 is still a really fun, very readable story, even now.  Man, Bill Everett was good... even when he wasn't on top of his game.)

CAPTAIN MAR-VELL #11

I've written entire long-winded tirades about exactlly what I think was going on there.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I could add X-MEN #12 to the list.

For several years, Roy Thomas used to feature editorials (or something) by Alex Toth in his ALTER EGO magazine.  I wish I could have read more of them.  He insisted on writing them in hand-lettering, and it just drove me nuts.  The ONE that really stuck out in my mind was when he went on about how the so-called "Marvel Method" was, in his view, a TERRIBLE way to create comics. Forcing an artist to do their own writing, trying to pace out a story and do page designs, with NO idea what the text would be or how much space it would take up in any given panel... I'm not crazy about Toth as a person, from things I've read about him, and other than a very small number of 'adventure" stories he did for Warren, I've never been wild about his COMICS work.  But it turned out I'd been a HUGE fan of his TV animation work for decades, and he was one of my biggest influences when I was growing up, without my even knowing who the hell he was.  And this kinda stuck with me. 

I've come to agree with him.  Unless you have ONE person doing both the writing (and by that I mean story AND dialogue) and the art, "comics" are a special sort of magic that is difficult if not near-impossible for most people whose jobs are broken down onto an assembly-line to do anything of real INSPIRED work.

[profh0011]

I just re-watched the MIKE HAMMER episode with Ted De Corsia as Pat Chambers. 
"DEATH TAKES AN ENCORE". 



Mike is in disguise, with Darren McGavin wearing specs and affecting a very timid, nervious disposition for part of the story, Pat sends a GOON to drag Mike to see him, and orders Mike to "STAY OUT OF IT!" stronger than in just about any other story, with virtually no hint these guys are... BEST FRIENDS.  You know what I thinik?  I think this was the PILOT episode.  Run out of sequence. 

It's like when NBC ran the STAR TREK pilot 3rd, and for one week, the sets, costumes, props and some of the cast were different.

[crashryan]

Unless you have ONE person doing both the writing (and by that I mean story AND dialogue) and the art, "comics" are a special sort of magic that is difficult if not near-impossible for most people whose jobs are broken down onto an assembly-line to do anything of real INSPIRED work.

I must disagree on this point. Just as someone who's a brilliant instrumentalist can't necessarily write symphonies, someone who is good at visual storytelling isn't necessarily good at creating plots or writing dialogue. Indeed those who are, are a minority. Though the writer/artist divide in American comics was driven by an assembly-line mentality, I feel that eventually things would have moved in that direction anyway.

The Marvel Method has its plusses and its minuses. It pushes more of the burden of story development onto the artist. (This often means more work for the same money. I'll set finances aside though and just consider the creative aspect.) The plus: being required to break down the story frees an artist to work with pacing, panel progression, and inventive page layouts. The minus: even with detailed marginal notes the dialogue writer may misunderstand the artist's intent and write dialogue that clashes with the art.

In interviews some artists have said they'd prefer to work from a script because all they want to do is draw. That doesn't mean that they'll never produce great stories. Pair them with a good scriptwriter and they could work marvels. European comics have produced memorable writer-artist teams. J.-M. Charlier and Jean Giraud. Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Hector Oesterheld and pretty much anybody.

Of course writers must have an understanding of visual storytelling. They can't write stuff like "Panel one: Joe walks to the safe, opens it, then turns to the others triumphantly." (Unless they're writing for British pocket libraries, I guess. They'd just put all that in a caption. But I consider that poor storytelling.) I'd also hope writers would avoid enormous clouds of dialogue smothering the art. On the flip side, I'd expect artists to respect the script. No outrageous Fraccio-style cheats or fancy-schmancy unreadable layouts like many of the Spanish artists who worked for Warren and Skywald.

A problem I have with Kirby is that his stories piled on new ideas so thick and fast that nothing ever was fully developed. He seems to have had a big-picture idea of how everything tied in. However he never pulled all the individual elements together into a coherent plot. He also, in my opinion, had a tin ear for dialogue.

I don't have the inside info you seem to have on what was going on with Steranko at Marvel. From the outside the things you mention, like random inkers and fill-in issues, are usually symptoms of deadline problems. I was a great fan of Steranko's Marvel work. However as has been noted he tended to go for effect at the expense of story. I agree his writing improved as he progressed. It would have been nice to see where he'd have taken Fury. He seemed to have had problems focussing, though. O'Ryann's Odyssey, Talon the Barbarian, Unnamed Western, History of the Comics, Comixscene/Mediascene. He'd start one thing then hop to another. He seemed most comfortable when he was doing once-and-done projects like paperback covers.

[profh0011]

I think it's a shame that Steranko didn't stick with comics.  To me, looking back, those 3 CAP issues show he was right on the verge of becoming a truly GREAT writer.  But then... it never happened.  He did 3 more stories.  the first was tampered with by his editor.  the 2nd was tampered with by his editor.  The 3rd... when it became obvious his editor refused NOT to tamper with it, e took it back and it was NEVER published... to this day.

His one "longterm" project has been MEDIASCENE PREVUE.  He did that (is still doing it?) for decades.



Jack Kirby does not have a "tin ear" for dialogue.  What we have are legions of S*** L** fans who are so obsessed with how HE writes dialogue... and how his army of imitators write dialogue... that Kirby's dialogue is not to their liking.

I have no problem with Kirby dialogue.  But in the last several years, I have a growing LACK of tolerance for dialogue by the likes of Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont... the list goes on.  I can't believe how bad so much of it is.

[The Australian Panther]

I've taken my time responding to the last couple of posts here because a couple of us clearly have a difference of opinion and I don't want to appear to be escalating that into a full-blown argument, so thinking as a photographer, lets just see it as a difference in perspective and understand that we have no intention of personally disrespecting each other. 

For several years, Roy Thomas used to feature editorials (or something) by Alex Toth in his ALTER EGO magazine.  I wish I could have read more of them.  He insisted on writing them in hand-lettering, and it just drove me nuts.   

Absolutely agree!

Toth wrote that:- the so-called "Marvel Method" was, in his view, a TERRIBLE way to create comics. Forcing an artist to do their own writing, trying to pace out a story and do page designs, with NO idea what the text would be or how much space it would take up in any given panel.

This begins to explain to me just what the difference in approaches of Kirby and Toth amounted to.
Elsewhere I have shared the anecdote that Kirby and Toth once got together for a talk. First one spoke for an hour and then the other spoke for an hour. Later, both said, ' I listened for an hour and I have no idea what he was talking about.' [I paraphrase]
Toth was obviously very happy with a tight script, but he stretched it visually as far as he could and made the work entirely his. He obviously liked the challenge of being restrained and pushing the boundries as far as he could within the restraint of the script. Kirby did not.   
Kirby tho, was a dramatist, an instinctive storyteller, a dreamer, who visualized the entire story and was unhappy with editorial interference.
How did the 'Marvel Method' come about?
I think 'the editor' was actually pretty shrewd and cunning.And maybe [to be polite] prone to taking shortcuts. Having worked as a writer for so long at ATLAS, he realized that there were artists who could be given a brief outline who could be trusted to turn in a story to which you could save time by adding dialogue.
and there were also artists who needed a full script.Some of these got relegated to inking. He also realized Jack Kirby's talent and that the 'fans' loved his work. So, he preferred to work with Kirby because it saved him time. His vanity [or whatever] still caused him to add changes to the work - sometimes for good reason, but also maybe just because he could'. It was also arrogant and insulting that work was signed ...... and Kirby when mostly it should have been Kirby and ....... So the problem with Daredevil [ And Prof, I have read your lengthy screeds on that book, and appreciated them] was that he hired people who were a generation older than him and to whom he should have given their head. But they found his treatment of them insulting and didn't stay. And they didn't want to be forced to copy Jack Kirby. I doubt Jack wanted that either.
Interestingly, two of the older guys who came in late and stayed to become part of the furniture were John Romita and John Buscema. Romita apparently had a good relationship with 'the editor' They joined at the time of the first 'big explosion' and one of the consequences of this was new writers, Thomas and Conway to start with.
Personally I think 'the editor' was relieved to have more writers and hand over books to them, because it left him more time for promotion and self-promotion, which was always his greatest skill.

Jack Kirby does not have a "tin ear" for dialogue.  What we have are legions of S*** L** fans who are so obsessed with how HE writes dialogue... and how his army of imitators write dialogue... that Kirby's dialogue is not to their liking.

Well, there we do disagree. Having, by the time Kirby was at DC, familiarized myself with some of the work Jack did before Marvel, I felt that his dialogue had regressed to being what it had been before he worked with 'the editor'. One of the most important strengths of Marvel was that the dialogue sounded like something real people would say. So it helped you believe that say, Peter Parker, Ben Grimm and Janet Van Dyke were real people. This was often - no, not always - lacking in Kirby's dialogue. Kirby used dialogue to drive the action, but not as much to create character.

A problem I have with Kirby is that his stories piled on new ideas so thick and fast that nothing ever was fully developed. He seems to have had a big-picture idea of how everything tied in. However he never pulled all the individual elements together into a coherent plot. 

True, but I don't believe this was ever his intention. To slightly digress, just looking at the works we have here on CB+,I am struck by how often a new idea (more than often clever and well written and illustrated) doesn't often last 6 issues before the fickleness of the industry caused it to be cancelled.
[Got to be a terribly frustrating industry for a creative person to work in] 
Kirby thinks it terms of complicated scenarios and rarely got the chance to stay on a property long enough to tell the whole story.
Ironically, the one book where he had that chance, he chose not to. Something I noticed as a casual reader without any insider knowledge was that after the Galactus story he never introduced any significant new characters or villains. When you consider all that he still had in his head, all that he was still to create, imagine what would have happened if the Forth World mythos, Captain Victory and so on were all part of Marvel continuity? What had happened as I later found out and many of you know, was that Kirby had created the Silver Surfer with no help from 'the editor' and the character was taken away from him without consultation. Apparently, Kirby saw the character as a version of the biblical 'Fallen Angel' - radically different from the character that 'the Editor' created. From that point on, Kirby did good work for Marvel but never contributed a single major character.
Prof and Crash,
Thanks for the stimulating posts.
Cheers!